the other tempest

2010-01-01T21:18:00.000-08:00

Beet Pr0n

2009-12-22T07:44:00.000-08:00

Golden Gate Chicago

2009-11-12T15:46:00.000-08:00

Damen and the River

Did you know that you can get paid for having an opinion?

2009-11-05T14:44:00.000-08:00

From forever ago, I had an essay about being a snotty, brat and suddenly finding myself without a steady job or healthcare on NPR. Click this purple text to listen to it.

Ohio Street Beach, September

2009-10-01T13:11:00.000-07:00

Lepidoptera

2009-09-17T15:06:00.000-07:00

I am not scared of moths.

Gifts

2009-08-25T08:14:00.000-07:00

The Kite.

2009-08-07T12:38:00.000-07:00

She flies. THANK YOU SO MUCH.

I have a job.

2009-06-27T21:47:00.000-07:00

I have a few jobs, actually. But this one is new. Read my blogging and listen to my podcasting for Generation PRX at Youthcast.org. Find that bitch on iTunes, and you'll have a new episode every other Wednesday, featuring my mellifluous voice and a kick ass radio piece by a young American.

Sue, Arielle, Ming, and Li

2009-05-21T10:50:00.000-07:00

Fuck Yeah Seedlings

2009-05-18T06:23:00.000-07:00

Sunflower, arugula, lettuce, carrot, watermelon, beets, cosmos, zinnia, sweet pea, stock, sensitive plant, and nasturtium. Edibles by Skyfire, florals by Gethsemane.

May

2009-05-14T10:57:00.001-07:00

2009-05-11T14:37:00.000-07:00

My First Love is Being a DJ

2009-05-07T08:36:00.000-07:00

I'm a co-host on Zartan and Friends this week at WTNRradio.com, with my boy Jubei. Disseminating mp3 downloads of some bomb soul/hip-hop/jazz/psychedelic covers for the next week. Just register real quick and an hour plus of mixed music is yours for the keeping. Only streaming today between 6 am and 2 pm wherever you live.

Eggplants

2009-05-06T11:34:00.000-07:00

My nearest grocery store, Andy's Fruit Ranch, is where I shop the most and I am devoted. It's filled with Balkan imports like cured sausages, healing teas, and tons of cookies and chocolates, as well as Middle-Eastern specialty items like rose water and tahini. And as their name indicates, produce is the specialty. Eggplants (or as I like to call them when I am feeling fancy, aubergines) were on special this week for 39 cents a pound, so I revisited some dishes I made earlier this year.

Baba ghanouj I actually make pretty regularly because of how low maintenance a recipe it is. This is all you need to make it:
Get two large or three medium eggplants. Check their bottoms. The one's with clefts are female and have more seeds in them. Bitter seed removal is a bitch, but there are a bit fewer in the rounded bottom males. Stab the aubergines with a fork a bunch of times, wrap in foil, and then roast them at 425 for an hour plus. The squishier the better. When they're done, top and tail them and peel with your hands as soon as you can handle the heat. De-seed as best as you can and then chop roughly and throw in a bowl. Drain as much liquid as you can from the eggplants. As it settles in the bowl, it will come to top and you can pour it off.
The next part is all about taste. Into the bowl I throw in two large cloves of garlic, minced, and a whole lemon, because I love those things. I also use about a handful and a half of finely chopped parsley. Then it get two tablespoonsish of tahini paste and a healthy drizzle of olive oil. Mix it all up, salt to taste, and there you go. Fresh baba for snacking. Turn down the oven to 350 and make some fresh pita chips in 10 minutes it takes to combine ingredients while you're at it.

Fried eggplant lasagna is as good as it sounds and looks.
I generally have a lot of time on my hands during the day, so I made my own sauce for this, and I also purged the eggplants, which takes about two hours and isn't totally necessary, but enhances the flavors. I won't belabor how to make a lasagna, but suggest putting tons of romano and smoked mozz in there if you can, and also to consider the eggplant in it's floured and fried form.
Slice up two 'plants and lay the slices in stacks on a cutting board, sprinkling each layer with salt. Lay another board or flat something on top, plus about five pound of weight-- a big pot of water on top of a coffee table book on top of a second board works well. Slip a second book under the bottom board and let the pressure squeeze the juice out of the slices and into the sink. Run an errand, and when you come back, you have salty, less bitter slices, that you can then dip in flour and pan fry in olive oil till brown. Eat them right then, or slip them amongst the layers of cheese, sauce, and noodles for a badass, filling lasagna that you can eat for a week. Unless you have boys around. They will kill that shit in a night.

(crossposted to Crows in the Kitchen)

F My Life

2009-04-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

I got an editorial assignment to turn some material from FMyLife into audio that I complained about doing and that I think turned out okey-dokey.

And while I'm here at Vocalo, blogging, I'll link to the other piece of immaterial work* I made today: a cutting of an exceedingly long (12 mins) interview/story with a stalwart Chicago jazz bassist into a coherent, and perhaps punchy, narrative.

*I have this problem with the ephemeral nature of audio because I work for hours on something, very delicately and nimbly, and the fact that I can't pick it up and hold it bothers me GREATLY.

All in a Day's Work

2009-04-16T08:02:00.000-07:00

Replace "Walking" with "Biking" and give or take on that 24.7 miles.

Shedd

2009-04-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

Two Years Ago

2009-04-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

2009-03-31T23:02:00.000-07:00

That's So Not Something I Would Do

2009-03-27T10:28:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Max, Eric, and Josh for making this come ALIVE.

The Texas Ballroom

2009-03-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

This is what it sounds like when I hang out with my mom.

2009-03-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

A reason to get off of Facebook.

Pre-Gaming for Spring

2009-03-12T10:56:00.000-07:00

Gutter Pigeon

2009-03-05T15:28:00.001-08:00

Drumsticks

2009-03-04T08:17:00.000-08:00

Jean-Luc!

2009-03-02T17:56:00.000-08:00

Humble Food

2009-02-24T12:39:00.001-08:00

ENDYMION

The Bolton Family junk jumbalaya recipe, mid preparation: rice, home smoked sausage from somewhere outside Baton Rouge, a bunch of green onions, can of french onion soup, can of beef broth, plenty of chicken, and, wonderfully, a stick of butter.

BABYLON

Muffuletta from Central Grocery and Zapps Sour Cream and Onion potato chips, eaten on the banks of the Mississippi: swiss cheese, salami, olives, pickled carrots, pickled peppers, pickled cucumbers, oregano, thyme, and olive oil on a sesame bun.

MUSES

Budreaux nomming the best and most earned street food I've had in awhile: pork chop from a barrel smoker, smothered in barbecue sauce, between two slices of white bread. Keep it simple.

Barret eating meatballs at Avi's Bar Mitzvah

2009-02-18T13:12:00.000-08:00

"There are a lot of adults here!"

Dome

2009-02-11T12:10:00.001-08:00

In the Chicago Cultural Center, née the Public Library.

The Rooster

2009-02-08T18:49:00.000-08:00

Bock Johnson!

2009-02-02T19:45:00.001-08:00

Listen to his newest position on the economy and don't forget to write-in Bock Johnson in the March 3rd primaries!

Cat Sitting Adventure

2009-01-29T11:51:00.000-08:00

Something

2009-01-23T10:27:00.000-08:00

Obstinacy and charm were our common characteristics. It was sometimes shocking how we would come up against something that we did not like and did not agree with and we would somehow get our way, even though the odds of our way being gotten did not look good at the outset. It was pig-headedness tempered with a natural kindness and gentleness: when making an argument, we would repeatedly use the phrase, I don’t understand, and use it in a tone that was innocent and beguiling: I don’t understand because I am an idiot, a helpless idiot, and there is a gap in my knowledge and if you get your way, you have forced yourself upon me, you have taken advantage of me. I mentioned earlier about David’s special blackboard, the only one in the school. I was there when Mr. Dressler presented his case to the head of facilities. It was a masterful. Mr. Collucci was walking down the hall right outside the English office, right in front of my locker, a week before the change was supposed to take place. I had my bike helmet under my arm and was going for the charming third time of spinning my combination to get the damn thing open. Mr. Dressler called out to him from inside the office and came trotting out.
Hey, Rick?
Yeah, David. Good morning.
Good morning. Can I ask you a question about those blackboards?
Oh, the goddamn blackboards.
Rick Collucci was married to the principal of one of the elementary schools and had been the head of facilities at that school when I was a student there. He was great. He remembered everyone’s names until they graduated. He used to say, But then I gotta delete all you seniors to make room for the kindergartners.
Yeah so, I don’t understand why you’re replacing all of them. I want to keep mine. I will do anything. I want to keep mine.
You can’t keep it. It’s old.
But I don’t understand why.
They make too much dust. We gotta worry about everyone’s lungs. It’s like the asbestos they got out of here ten years ago.
It’s nothing like asbestos.
No, it’s not, but we still gotta do it.
But I don’t understand. It makes no sense to me. I mean, how about this?
Mr. Dressler’s voice raised half an octave here, almost to a whine but not quite and instead it made his voice sound more like a child’s, young and guileless.
How about I do all the cleaning of the board. I mean, I’ll bring in a little vaccum or something and get all the dust and I’ll wash it every day. I mean, I just don’t understand why you’ve gotta get rid of it. The smell of those markers makes me sick anyways, give me headaches. I can’t write with those markers, Rick. I can’t do it. I’ll clean it myself. The board. You gotta let me keep my board. I need it. Please.
He pressed his hands together in prayer as he spoke the end of this, shaking them at Mr. Collucci, and then resting them under his chin, his eyes wide like a naïf. He could have pooched out his lower lip and made a joke of his pleading, but he didn’t and instead the gesture made him look sincerely desperate and upset, like he was talking to an emergency room doctor about the prognosis for his accident mangled child rather than about what he would make notes on during class. His desire to keep the blackboard and the intensity with which he cared about this thing was ridiculous and illogical, but that’s why he would win. He was passionate about something that seemed not to matter at all, and therefore, if Rick denied him something that meant nothing personally to the facilitation of the school, it would be undiplomatic and unkind. Uncharitable.
Oh, you’re killing me, Collucci said. No way.
Please. Please.
No way.
Rick. Rick. Come on, Rick. It’s not a big deal. Help me understand why you have to do it.
District ordinance! I can’t do anything. Why is it such a big deal to you?
It is. I love the blackboard. It works really well for me and I’m used to it. Seriously, I know it’s stupid, but I want it. I love it. I don’t want to change. And I hate those markers. Rick. You don’t have to replace it. You can do something.
David waited for an answer. Collucci gnawed his lower lip and squinted at his skinny face. Then David added,
It makes no sense anyway. I don't understand it. And I will bother you about it every day that I see you if you do.
Here Rick put his hands on his hips, sighed real loud, looked down at his feet and then lifted his eyes to look up at David with his head still bowed.
Oh my god, okay. Okay. Look, I don’t have the final say in this but I’ll see what I can do. You’re probably going to have to write a letter or something, put it in writing, make it formal. Play up that headache thing with the markers. Jeez Louise. And tell me what kind of vacuum you’re gonna need, goddamit.
Mr. Dressler grabbed on to one of Mr. Collucci’s shoulders and nodded his head and pursed his lips like the doctor had just told him that his kid would be fine, just fine, and his face would be just like it was before.
Thank you.
A sincerer thank you one could not make.

Lake and California

2009-01-19T11:26:00.000-08:00

2009-01-15T11:56:00.000-08:00

Scurvy, infectious diseases, mermaids, sea monsters, tempests, sirens, different types of ships, the sexton, constellations, buccaneers, sharks, love at sea, sea men, slaves, weaponry, hidden treasure, sea birds, fishing, merchant marine, different of a ship, prostitution, adventures at port, the gentry/noblemen, God at sea, the Devil at sea, colorists, missionaries, landlubbers, spices, ghosts at sea, moralism, foggy conditions, icebergs, types of fish, whales, whaling encounters, maelstrom, homoeroticism, rum, other liquor, the passage to India, beaching, fighting, fidelity, loneliness, madness, dehydration, hunger, sea dogs, monkeys, and salt encrusted eyelashes.

Da...

2009-01-14T15:29:00.001-08:00

Benny the Bull from Toaster Waffles on Vimeo.

Previews

2009-01-12T15:22:00.000-08:00

Leath in Antarctica. Featuring that squeaking sound of walking on snow when it is very, very, very cold.

2009-01-10T11:01:00.000-08:00

There's a blizzard this morning. I wish I were a naked mole rat at the Lincoln Park Zoo.

Spot the Axolotl

2009-01-05T21:23:00.000-08:00

Learn about this fascinating neotynyte.

My building door last week.

2008-12-30T16:55:00.000-08:00

No, ma'am, neither of those things would do it.

Three months later.

2008-12-27T11:46:00.000-08:00

Earth science lesson: The river is steaming because it is warmer than the air temperature, which was 5F the morning this was taken. The ducks swim on. They look like they hate it.

Upgrades

2008-12-24T09:44:00.000-08:00

The Garden did for me what Martin did for the people.

HAPPY HANNUKAH

2008-12-22T14:18:00.000-08:00

Now I feel like I'm blogging.

2008-12-15T13:35:00.000-08:00

Over here at the Chicago Reader, they posted a story about the layoffs that took place at WBEZ and :Vocalo on Friday, December 5. To preserve my own, ahem, professionalism in commenting on something that I regard as fairly unprofessional and back-biting (but alas, such is the nature of the Internet and independent print media), I'll just direct y'all down to the comments and make my observations about those. My own opinions about :Vocalo, WBEZ, and the management of both will be reserved for personal emails.

What's fascinating to me is the insane amount of them that have accumulated in the week in a half since the post went up. (152!) In some ways, it is reassuring that this many people care so passionately, and at times stupidly, about public radio. But the personal bent of so many of the comments is disconcerting/makes me feel icky . It's a bummer that readers are adding their thoughts here, anonymously, as opposed to emailing CPR or the Vocalo staff. It's public media! Board meetings are open. Radio stations have phone numbers. And it's particularly ironic that so much of the bashing of or support of :Vocalo and WBEZ and Torey Malatia is the exact type of dialogue that the :Vocalo wants to foster: angry opinions that bounce off each other, find no resolution, and get broadcasted all over the Internet. Like a collectiuve of journalists who simultaneously cover the press conference and then throw their shoes as a hard as they can at the head of the Head of State.

And this also makes me think of the nature of independent media, which is competitive and nasty and makes me weight the merits of being a journalist every time my work is published/broadcast. It's striking how independent media outlets try to out-indie each other all the time. I'll wager that almost every American city has seen this little battle take place at some point. To cite specifics, take Newspeak in Colorado Springs. Started up by former writers for "The Independent" (quotes used to indicate title and irony of publication's title considering that it is... not alternative, to put it concisely), Newspeak used to spend at least 200 words of every issue shitting on the Independent. Be it taking them to task for boring features, quoting its writers and editors on off-the-record comments, or just generally being snarky, it was sad to read. The "alternativeness" of Newspeak was built on comparing themselves to the more "mainstream" rags in the Springs, rather than being built on providing voices to marginalized community members, like in the Homelessness issue, or advocating for government and media accountability. Newspeak is now all online and has finally cut that shit out for the most part, instead replacing it with YouTube videos, so who knows if that's an improvement, but I'd rather watch a kitten be all sleepy than read about one newspaper's thoughts about another newspaper/newspaper's thoughts about a radio station/radio stations thoughts about a newspaper.

2008-12-15T11:12:00.000-08:00

Reality TV is my favorite kind of TV

2008-12-10T14:01:00.000-08:00

This is me, my mom, and Bob Crowley. Bob is currently one of the final 6 contestants on the seventeenth (!) season of Survivor. He also helped my dad build our back porch and trim our catalpa tree after a nasty storm. I've gone lobstering on his boat and jumped on his kids' trampoline.

Home for Thanksgiving, I went to the Portland Yacht Club with my parents to drink beer (as you can see) and watch that week's episode on a big screen with about 150 other people. Bob won the immunity challenge and is generally a badass Mainer. He's a great guy with a great family and let's all hope that he wins a million dollars in the next week.

By Bus and By Train

2008-12-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

The Piscataqua Bridge, connecting Maine to New Hampshire.

Palace Playland in Old Orchard Beach. Nothing sadder'n an amusement park in a Quebecois resort town on the Maine coast in December.

Found

2008-12-04T12:08:00.001-08:00

Two photos taken outside of Deering High School. The first is documentation of a Lawn Sports Society social gathering and it was found among my personal files. Photo credit to Leo Duncan. The second was acquired today on the corner of Prospect and Beacon Streets. Photographer: unknown.

Palling Around

2008-11-26T20:56:00.001-08:00

Over here on Youth Radio are some segments of an interview I produced with Bill Ayers last week. The inside scoop: Bill has a pierced ear, likes to be called by his first name, hugged me goodbye, has an insane amount of ephemera on his door, and has beautiful pictures of his family around his office, which is terribly disorganized. I'm hoping to get some further interviews with him in December to talk more about his past and his views on activism and its many permutations, such as terrorism. It'll show up here if it happens.

WWCPLD?

2008-11-19T10:02:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, we threw a party. And it was a great party, but it came with a price: my computer screen got spiderwebbed by unnamed parties that do not include myself. So, until I get something worked out, the Public Library computers are my Internet home and although T.S. Eliot says, "The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man," you can't download/upload a GD thing onto their computers. So, Thomas Stearns, what hope do you have for the future of web-logging? Huh? Huh?

Big Crowds at Night

2008-11-12T13:37:00.001-08:00

The moment it was announced, Barack descended in a ball of white light.

Critical Mass on the North Ave. Bridge in September. After I left they ended up getting onto Lake Shore.

In addition to that "USA" lite brite, the Hancock had red, white, and blue gels along its top floor, and the Sears' antennae were red and blue. Hoorah!

Andy Wentz Made This

2008-11-07T12:01:00.000-08:00

As usual: documentation of the work does the original no justice. This piece is about 8 by 6 feet and hotter than two hells. Andy's the bomb.

2008-11-05T12:36:00.001-08:00

And just like two years ago, we may love blacks, but we still hate gay people.

2008-11-04T08:28:00.000-08:00

An Experiment

2008-10-31T10:05:00.000-07:00

I had this thought, as this web log is intended to showcase things that I make/create... What have I done in the past four years? One answer is, "Wrote papers. English papers." So here is one that I got a subjective "A" on. Enjoy.

Molly Adams
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
David Mason, The Romantic Lyric

Combating Stagnancy: Savage Torpor in “These chairs they have no words to utter”

As with any screed of idealism, William Wordsworth has trouble living up to the goals he sets for himself in the Preface he wrote for the 2nd edition of Lyrical Ballads. Trying to head off a critic from panning you usually leads to generalizations and sweeping statements made about your work. But rather than finding all the spots where he uses so-called elevated/poetic imagery that no farmer would ever use, I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt and examine the poem where I believe he is the most successful in meeting some of his own standards. Of primary importance to this paper, Wordsworth states that, “For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor” (499). Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that the opposite of truth is repose. To be reduced to a state of savage torpor is to cease to seek the truth and commit one’s self to ignorance. Wordsworth writes further that, “I am almost ashamed to have spoken of the feeble effort with which I have endeavoured to counteract it [the “deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.”] The time is approaching when the evil will be systematically opposed by men of greater powers and with far more distinguished success” (500) This declaration exposes the political Wordsworth of sonnets and allegory, the poet fighting against the increasingly totalitarian government that had developed in England since the American and French Revolutions with his words. He saw increasing complacency around him, people unwilling to use their minds because it might land them in jail. Although “These chairs they have no words to utter” (528-29) is not a call to arms—subtlety is key—it shares a personal story of rejection of the complacency that into which, oppression tempts the human mind.

The objects first met in the poem furnish a basic room in a house: chairs and a fireplace, a ceiling and a floor. It is a rustic setting, an almost empty room, with not even a lit fire, a simple sign of comfort. “Low and Rustic life was generally chosen” as the setting for most of his poems “because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings and are more easily comprehended and are more durable…in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature” (497). All alone, this speaker is content in his “chamber hushed and still.” What Wordsworth is doing is flipping a scene of domestic tranquility on its head, following his guideline that, “the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and the situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling” (499). But he has also created a speaker who has a mind “[unfit] for all voluntary exertion]. The silence of the room is stifling, “The ceiling and floor are as mute as stone.” The feeling of entrapment is then applied to these familiar objects. The speaker is alone, but the next line catches us off guard: “Happy and alone.” Because following that, the speaker is not just happy with being alone, isolated from humans who have the power to utter, stir, or flutter, or nature, which feeds the thoughts of poets (ln 13) but equates that happiness experienced through stagnancy of mind and body with the experience of being dead, thereby desiring death over “the passion, the sorrow, and the strife” of life because it is a more simple and peaceful state. This is craziness because Wordsworth tears down what he has established as an idealist vision in poetic works. Low and rustic life—at least the indoors part of it—becomes a source of savage torpor. Wordsworth has found the weakness of his own opinion concerning rural life: “Beautiful and permanent forms of nature” are not always present. And the speaker indicates himself as sharing these tendencies toward barbaric laziness that I would imagine he usually only attributes to “the accumulation of men in cities” (499).

Supposedly composed “Half an hour afterwards,” the first line of “Part Two” flat-out rejects the complacency of the first two stanzas. The speaker says, “I have thoughts that are fed by the sun,” making it clear that the outdoors are an essential ingredient to get those brain juices to flowing. The amendment to the first section complicates who is doing the speaking in the first and second parts and opens itself up to a number of interpretations concerning who is affected by savage torpor and how to avoid becoming one of the afflicted. Assuming the speaker is the same, if this part was composed 30 minutes after the first part, it suggests that to move away from savage torpor is not all that difficult. It’s as though the state of the speaker is a form of light melancholy, like he woke up a little grumpy and then after stretching and yawning, makes a drastic turn-around to greet the day. It can then be read as part of the poet’s struggle, or even part of all worker’s struggles, that no matter how good life gets, sometimes you just do not want to get out of bed. The second part embraces “The things which I see/Are welcome to me, /Welcome every one[.]” But the second composition could be the voice of a second speaker chiming in after a little thought. In this case it serves as a caveat, a voice crying out in opposition to the boredom of the first. It is Wordsworth the poet attempting to reconnect humanity to reality. “Reflecting upon the magnitude of general evil,” Wordsworth writes in the Preface, “I should be oppressed with no dishonourable melancholy had I not the deep impression of certain inherent and indestructible qualities of the human mind” (500). Sound is reintroduced in the second part as “the quiet of death” (italics mine). The poem is not a call to arms because it does not need to be. Wordsworth believes that people are basically good, innately wanting to eliminate evil and death from the world and not take oppression lying down. The lament of “peace, peace, peace,” as the last line of the poem is for all humanity, not just for one man who “may lie in peace on his bed” in line 10 of the first part. And though I read it both ways, I think it is the reading of the second part as an example of a singular rebellion against savage torpor by a poet that has the most power.

Now, what is really one of the loveliest bits about this lyric is that Wordsworth let its sentiments spill into his life of leisure with Dorothy, emphasizing his assertion that “all good poetry is the spontaneous of powerful feelings” (498). In her April 29 journal entry, a week after the poem was written, Dorothy recalls her day by a creek with William, listening to the “voice of the air”: “William heard me breathing and rustling now and then, but we both lay still and unseen by one another. He thought that it would be as sweet thus to lie so in the grave, to hear the peaceful sounds of the earth and know that one’s dear friends were near” (587). Because at the end of “These chairs they have no words to utter,” life should “be thou ever as now, /Sweetness and breath with the quiet of death, /peace, peace, peace.” Life must commingle with death, otherwise, without being part of a binary, how would life be defined? And if pervading silence signals the death of the mind, the ability to hear and appreciate sound beyond the grave is representative of an individual whose thought never ends. Like the “Lucy” poems, to die is to be immersed in the earth, losing the self-propelled force and energy of life, but becoming part of the eternally churning energy of the earth. But to be immersed in that energy, there has to be energy to begin with. To die a death of savage torpor is in effect to commit suicide by ignorance. And we all know what happens to suicides…

All following citations in the paper are from:
Wu, Duncan. Romanticism: An Anthology, 3rd Edition. Blackwell Publishing, Malden,
MA: 2006.

Two blocks from my house.

2008-10-22T08:22:00.000-07:00

Chicago used to be a swamp.

Goldsworthian Public Art

2008-10-08T10:39:00.000-07:00

The documentation of a little public art project that mi amigo Leath and I made in the Art Institute garden last Thursday. We directed a Segway tour to view it as we were leaving. I am wondering if it is still there.

Let Go of That!

2008-10-06T17:19:00.001-07:00

I "work" at Vocalo.org. I have a couple things to say about it, but for now I offer up a link to a piece I cut together using some of my own audio and some stuff that I picked off of our library and out of our website. And perhaps from here, you will explore on your own.

Self-deprecation is the new confidence.

2008-09-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

My silly piece of nothing about boats was on NPR's Day to Day yesterday. You can stream it here.

On Tree Grates

2008-09-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

All along 51st street, where Rockefeller Center is, are tree grates like the one right below this post. I'm guessing John J. wanted everything to fit into his Art Deco sensibilities.

A tree grate like this one, I believe, is a seized opportunity for urban decoration and is there to protect the possibly exposed roots of a tree from foot traffic and cigarette butts and general contamination. Maybe it is also there to keep tree liberators from digging the poor city tree up from 51st street in New York City and bringing it to a restful, shady place that a tree actually has business being in.

City to City to City

2008-09-12T09:44:00.000-07:00

Before I move on to Chicago (where I am), here's where I've been: tree grate, lonely Jewish boy at the MoMA, delicious white pizza in the park, the goddamn subway at three a.m., and Boston at night.

APB

2008-08-25T23:30:00.000-07:00

my bike was fucking stolen. she's yellow and her name is terry.

For Bud: A Dying Deer

2008-08-21T07:01:00.000-07:00

This is what we should do if we accidentally hit an animal with a car and are unable to complete the kill. However, I don't think anyone I know is this brave. Click the title of the post to listen in.

Nitty Gritty: From an audio project I completed last year. This story belongs to my project advisor's brother.

Skies

2008-08-19T07:46:00.001-07:00

Dusk to night. Magritte much?

2008-08-16T23:58:00.000-07:00

And yes, that makes two (I mean, three) entries about cats. Whatever.

Cats!

2008-08-16T23:46:00.001-07:00

Necko and Ralphie.

A Reason Why I Do and Do Not Miss Living With A Cat

2008-08-14T14:27:00.000-07:00

I'm house sitting this week and taking care of five (5!) cats. One of them woke me up this morning at 7:20 by licking my elbow because he was hungry. When I opened my eyes, he earnestly meowed at me, if you'll excuse my anthropomorphizing. It was kind of cute I guess.

May's Insect Museum

2008-08-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

At May's Insect Museum in South Colorado Springs.

I LIKE lichen.

2008-08-09T22:10:00.000-07:00

Up the hill at my neighbor's. Note the giant rock.

Who wants to hear a cuy have its neck snapped?

2008-08-08T08:57:00.000-07:00

If the answer is yes, click on the title of this post.

From recordings I made in Peru four years ago. South Americans call them cuy (coo-ee) because, well, that's the sound they make and it makes more sense than guinea pig.

Great Success

2008-08-07T11:36:00.001-07:00

Diposable Camera

2008-08-06T10:26:00.001-07:00

The beach and José out at Ram Island Farm.

Squirrel Story

2008-08-05T19:09:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago, I was racing time trials on bikes with Gena, and I ended up losing because when I was coming down Ashmont Street, a squirrel darted in front of me and I had to swerve to avoid hitting it. The feeling of running over a squirrel's spine with a bike tire, which I have never felt, is what I think about whenever I am biking near squirrels. So today, I cut through Deering Oaks on my way downtown, and these two little squirrels, little teenage squirrels, freak out and make a run across the path. The first one makes it, but the other smacks into my moving tire and then runs alongside it as I'm braking, trying to squeeze underneath the front of it. I ran over its paw, finally stopped myself, and it climbed up a tree. I yelled "Stupid squirrel!" at it for being a stupid squirrel and further traumatized it.

2008-08-04T10:58:00.001-07:00

Terry, backpack, and boulevard.

i think if you click this you can listen to what this post is about

2008-08-03T22:55:00.000-07:00

my completed assignment for: radio ephemera. it's called "I'd Like to Introduce You to My Mom."